For the first time, a funeral service was held yesterday at the University of Malta to bid farewell to eminent medieval historian Godfrey Wettinger.
Prof. Wettinger, who died on Friday, aged 85, was given a fond farewell by former students, colleagues, family and friends. It was his express wish that he should have a secular funeral.
Faculty of Arts dean Dominic Fenech, who organised the service, paid tribute to the senior fellow of the university who had dedicated his entire life to scholarship.
Prof. Wettinger, he said, had demonstrated that history was alive and that it formed our identities and freed us from the state of mind projected by others. The late scholar’s brother, Alfred, who has lived in Australia for most of his life, reminisced about a young Godfrey, describing him as a studious boy who once asked their mother to change bedrooms to afford him more silence.
He recalled a humorous incident in which Prof. Wettinger thought that the door of his car was locked and inserted his hand through the open window to show his brother he could not open it from the inside as well. It was only after moving the latch up and down a few times that he realised the window had been open all along, he recalled, as a soft laugh rippled through the gathering.
It’s left a gaping hole at the university that is hard to fill
Former university librarian and friend Paul Xuereb recalled Prof. Wettinger’s dislike of priests, especially those who had historiographic pretentions. The late Fr Mikiel Fsadni was the only religious person with whom he collaborated, Mr Xuereb pointed out.
One of the most evocative moments in the service was that when Martin Zammit, a professor of Arabic, took to the podium to read Il-Kantilena aloud in 15th-century Maltese.
Prof. Wettinger and colleague Fr Fsadni had stumbled across the oldest poem in the Maltese language in 1966, a moment which Prof. Wettinger described as “a scoop to beat all scoops where our Maltese tongue is concerned”.
Former university rector Roger Ellul-Micallef said that when he had visited Prof. Wettinger in hospital, he spoke about how his home help of 21 years had said she was tired.
“He spoke of how he was prepared to go to Karin Grech Hospital until he could find a solution. Unfortunately, the solution came earlier than we thought.”
Hailing him as a patriot of Maltese history and language, who was greatly respected by medieval scholars worldwide, Prof. Ellul-Micallef said Prof. Wettinger’s loss had “left a gaping hole at the university that was hard to fill”.